Solar Panels and Tax

[Julia]

"Green schemes have emerged as a new driver of price increases," warns IPART.

It's the result of federal and NSW incentives for households to install solar panels on their roofs. The bigger than expected take-up has overtones of Labor's disastrous home insulation program. It serves the yearning by higher-income environmentally aware consumers to save the planet by acting locally while getting other consumers to subsidise their power bills.

Sims slams the combination of federal and NSW solar panel incentives as "an expensive, cost-ineffective way of reducing carbon emissions". "Its cost will be borne either by consumers or taxpayers for many years to come," the IPART ruling says. Of course, the whole point of a carbon tax is to eliminate the need for such high-cost abatement. Yet the power price increases fuelled by high-cost green schemes are inflaming the catch-22 backlash against a lower-cost carbon price.

Hence the exponential rise we are seeing in basic bills to households.
i.e. the costs involved in providing subsidies to people wealthy enough to outlay the necessary capital to take advantage of the scheme are being passed on to those least able to afford these increases.

So you have the comfortable middle class, including those who are not even driven by environmental considerations but rather the notion of something for free, having their overall financial situation improved whilst the impoverished and disadvantaged pay the price.

 

[sptrawler]

It doesn't pay to work on the generation potential that is given by salesmen. They quote the maximum potential, my 4kw unit produced a total of 1407 kwh in 84 days. My unit is ideally placed, has the right aspect with no shade whatsoever and an ideal roof pitch. We had a period of abnormal cloudy days and rain but even on good days there really is only an hour or two of top generation. 2000kwh may be achievable but I suggest it is optomistic.

You are spot on nokia, tests carried out by Boston University for NASA, found that 4g/sqmetre of dust caused a 40% reduction in output. Australia has more than 4 times that deposition /month.
What I was getting at was, with the solar system you have to put in a new meter which differentiates between import and export. At the moment you get payed for export and get charged for your imports.
But in the future when you don't get payed for export will the solar generation reduce your imports through this style meter?
With the old meter if you were using less than you were making ,your meter went backwards and reduced your bill.
I wonder, when the rebate for exported power stops, if you can ask for one of the old meters to be installed?

 

[Smurf1976]

Has some one work out the cost per KW and what is the life of the battries?
Are you better off putting power back into the grid and just run the meter left and right to save buying batteries, cables, controllers etc.

I haven't worked out the exact cost, but I'll put it this way. The entire electricity industry, from fuel supply (to power stations) to distribution in your street, has major issues dealing with variation in demand (particularly at the extremes). If batteries were viable as a means of storage, you can be pretty sure that the industry would be using them.

At present, there's a significant battery system on King Island but that's about it apart from various experiments and the usual battery applications of backing up supply to critical equipment etc. Batteries are high cost, high maintenance and high pollution.

The major storing of electricity in Australia occurs in the form of pumped hydro at Tumut 3 (Snowy scheme), Wivenhoe (Qld) and the Shoalhaven scheme (NSW). The other common means is to store it as heat where heat is the ultimate use - off-peak hot water is the common household example but there is some use of the same principle for space heating (mostly confined to Vic and Tas though it does exist elsewhere) and commercial chillers, particularly at dairy farms.

In short, if you're going to stay connected to the grid then forget batteries unless it's for backup during blackouts etc. If you're not on the grid then it's a very different story and in most situations you'll need batteries if you want 24/7 power supply.

 

[Smurf1976]

But in the future when you don't get payed for export will the solar generation reduce your imports through this style meter?
With the old meter if you were using less than you were making ,your meter went backwards and reduced your bill.
I wonder, when the rebate for exported power stops, if you can ask for one of the old meters to be installed?

What happens in future is a damn good question and I must say that the electricity industry has a pretty poor track record of actually sticking to a plan as far as household consumers are concerned. Lots of things have come and gone over the years, and more than few have been left with dud investments as a result.

To be fair though, it's not just the electricity industry. There's still plenty of people around who compare any form of future price gouging in the energy industry to the heating oil price shock of 1979 that left tens of thousands of families literally shivering when they couldn't afford the cost (a claim suppored by the massive 60% decline in consumption compared to 1 year earlier). There's still plenty of people around with bitter memories of those days even though it was 32 years ago.

Fundamentally, solar panels are pretty robust as are most inverters. The main investment risk is thus political (the electricity industry is still substantially government controlled even where it is privately owned).

 

[drsmith]

It doesn't pay to work on the generation potential that is given by salesmen. They quote the maximum potential, my 4kw unit produced a total of 1407 kwh in 84 days. My unit is ideally placed, has the right aspect with no shade whatsoever and an ideal roof pitch. We had a period of abnormal cloudy days and rain but even on good days there really is only an hour or two of top generation. 2000kwh may be achievable but I suggest it is optomistic.

Salesman figures were around 2500kWh to 2800kWh.

The following 1.54kW setup in the Swan Valley just north of Perth suggests that might be achievable,

http://pvoutput.org/list.jsp?p=0&id=202&sid=217&o=date&d=desc

He has generated about 2000kWh since install in mid Sept 2010. Perth though is a very sunny location and the period since his install has been even less cloudy than normal.

I have a very similar roof aspect to that setup, so my 1.52kW setup should be similar or perhaps slightly less due to being a little further south (more cloud) and late afternoon tree shade.

With regard to the tree shade, if one panel (or more) is shaded in part or in full, does this affect the output from the remaining unshaded panels ?

 

[Smurf1976]

With regard to the tree shade, if one panel (or more) is shaded in part or in full, does this affect the output from the remaining unshaded panels ?

Yes, shading one panel will affect the output of the whole string since the panels are wired in series.

Typically, a smaller system will have all the panels wired in a single string. 2 or 3 strings are common only on larger systems.

Avoid any shade on the panels if at all possible. Trees, wood/gas/oil heater flues, roof mounted air-conditioners, sewer pipe vent, hot water system vent pipe, TV antennas / satellite dishes, whirlybirds etc. If at all possible, locate the panels where they won't be in the shade at least for the majority of the day. Don't forget the things you don't have control over - things that aren't on your property but which cast a shadow.

 

[drsmith]

Thanks Smurf for the reply.

There is an assortment of roof furniture (for want of a better expression to describe vents, flues, TV antennas etc) to consider.

Another question;

What happens when one (or more) individual cells are shaded on a solar panel ?

 

[Glen48]

I was reading were the introduction of fuel efficient cars would deprive the feds of revenue so they are now looking at way to tax the hybrid's etc wonder if the same will happen to solar were the power stations are not making money and each price rise make more people go solar.

 

[Smurf1976]

I was reading were the introduction of fuel efficient cars would deprive the feds of revenue so they are now looking at way to tax the hybrid's etc wonder if the same will happen to solar were the power stations are not making money and each price rise make more people go solar.

Bottom line is that the actual cost of your household electricity supply is several hundred $ per annum just to keep the system available. In addition, there's the cost of actually generating electricity (which is relatively low by the way).

The present and historic pricing model recovers most of the fixed costs via what amounts to a (hidden) surcharge on the unit rate for consumption. This model works perfectly well only where consumers have no alternative other than to consume electricity from the utility. Since fixed charges are recovered in proportion to consumption, the utility has a strong interest in maximising the volume of consumption - hence the industry's historic fairly aggressive marketing of electricity for applications where it faced competition (cooking, hot water and especially space heating in the cooler states).

As I said before, there was an attempt to separate all this out in Tasmania during the mid-1990's but it ended in an outright disaster politically. Some parts of it remain, albeit in a rather hidden form. The majority of Tasmanian homes pay $350 a year in fixed supply charges (still only around half of what it really ought to be) and the offset via higher unit rates is directed away from uses that face competition (heating and hot water) and into the largely captive "everything else" market.

The situation in the other states is generally even more extreme, with the fixed charges even lower and most of the actual fixed costs recovered by a charge on each unit consumed. Trouble is, this model falls in a hole big time if consumption declines.

In short, the cheapest way is large scale centralised generation using coal, gas or hydro. But the industry is no longer focused on cost as it was pre-1990's, and such arguments about cost minimisation are now largely irrelevant in practice. Indeed it would be true to say that the industry is now largely focused on how to justify higher costs, rather than how to reduce them since that's the way it works these days.

Put solar on your roof yes. You can get a 1.5kW system fully installed for somewhere in the order of $2000 if you're in a capital city. But don't fool yourself into thinking that we can run the whole country this way...

Solar market penetration here in Tas is around 2% of all homes now, virtually all of those installed within the past 2 years. Those 2% of homes with solar, manage to generate 0.05% of the state's electricity. 0.05% of power from a $35 - $40 million total investment - you do the math but suffice to say that hydro, wind or gas are far cheaper options for generation here in Tas and that coal or gas are cheaper options in the other Australian states. But as I said, the industry hasn't really been focused on costs since the 90's since that's not how it works these days.

 

[sptrawler]

Good summation smurf, coal is still the cheapest base load fuel,in W.A and will be for a long time. Alternative sources e.g wind and solar still require spinning reserves to cover them. Renewables won't be a real success untill battery storage technology improves.

 

[drsmith]

Panic stations ?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-over-solar-plan/story-e6frg6nf-1226047241258

One wonders what the Feds will do in the upcoming budget.

 

[Logique]

Panic stations ?http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-over-solar-plan/story-e6frg6nf-1226047241258One wonders what the Feds will do in the upcoming budget.

Thanks Dr Zacchary, I heard something this morning on the radio.

Looks like the solar rebates party is over in NSW.

I'm sure the announcer said it's possible that even the 20c feed in tariff could go.

 

[drsmith]

I'm sure the announcer said it's possible that even the 20c feed in tariff could go.

I wonder too how much longer the party will last in WA. In recent months there has been a sharp increase in system installs.

http://www.energy.wa.gov.au/3/3623/64/suppliers_and_installers.pm

 

[Calliope]

I wonder too how much longer the party will last in WA. In recent months there has been a sharp increase in system installs.

Some see a moral issue here with those who don't want or can't afford solar panels subsidising those who have installed them. Combet will probably pull the plug soon.

SOLAR panel rebates could be slashed again after the Government confirmed it was still concerned the scheme was driving up electricity prices for the poor.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said he was deeply concerned about the equity of the program that some experts estimated was already costing families that couldn't afford panels about $100 a year.

That's because the cost of the uncapped solar credits scheme that offers grants of about $6000 is passed on to consumers by electricity retailers, rather than being a cash grant in the Federal Budget.

Electricity users pay again when a feed-in tariff scheme "pays" the solar householders who produce more electricity than they use.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/solar-scheme-costs-poor-100-a-year/story-fn6ck45n-1226040263036

 

[drsmith]

Some see a moral issue here with those who don't want or can't afford solar panels subsidising those who have installed them. Combet will probably pull the plug soon.

What happens to all the solar panel companies that have started up ?

It'll be pink batts on steriods.

When are these clowns going to realise that such large subsidies for a single product creates severe market distortions and money poorly spent ?

Oh well!

Another ideological bender gone wrong.

 

[Smurf1976]

Good summation smurf, coal is still the cheapest base load fuel,in W.A and will be for a long time. Alternative sources e.g wind and solar still require spinning reserves to cover them. Renewables won't be a real success untill battery storage technology improves.

Wind "sort of" stacks up in Tasmania since it integrates very nicely with the energy constrained baseload hydro system where it can be an actual alternative to other means of system expansion. Also we don't have cheap coal as an alternative (we've got some coal, but lack of attainable scale in mining and using it precludes doing it cheaply as confirmed by numerous studies over the years).

But certainly in the other states wind doesn't really make economic sense. All it's doing is saving a bit of fuel, but the (coal or gas) power sations still have to be built and operated.

 

[sptrawler]

In W.A we have a wind farm on the coast and one is nearing completion 300k's inland. These are to make use of the overnight easterlies and the morning sea breeze, but because of W.A's load profile it is difficult to manage.

 

[drsmith]

Panic stations ?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-over-solar-plan/story-e6frg6nf-1226047241258

One wonders what the Feds will do in the upcoming budget.

I didn't think it would be a long wait.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...on-solar-credits/story-e6frg6xf-1226050083922

Under the solar credits scheme, householders are eligible for an upfront payment worth five times the value of certificates their solar panels will produce.

That was to have been scaled back to four times from July 1 under changes announced in December but the scale-back will be deepened today when the government declares the multiple will be cut to three from July 1.

The move will hasten the phase-out of the scheme. The multiple will fall from three to two from July 1, next year and then revert to one from July 1, 2013.

 

[Calliope]

I didn't think it would be a long wait.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...on-solar-credits/story-e6frg6xf-1226050083922

For those of us who have them installed, this is the sting in the tail. I always knew the feed-in price was too good to last.

As it moves to confront cost-of-living pressures, the government will also today announce it will ask state and territory governments to make sure their feed-in tariffs "do not impose an unjustifiable burden on electricity consumers".

 

[bellenuit]

For those of us who have them installed, this is the sting in the tail. I always knew the feed-in price was too good to last.

I haven't read the Ts & Cs of the FIT, but I understand from posters on Whirlpool that any reduction to the FIT would apply to new installations only. Aren't those from NSW who were lucky to be on the 60 cent rate still receiving that after the rate was reduced to 20 cents? I'm from WA so I am not sure.